SELWESKI: College football is spinning out of control

College sports long ago became a big business. Now, it’s become a political issue.

That’s because the football team at Northwestern University is seeking to form a union, to bargain for compensation just as university employees do, and to be paid for their time on the gridiron.

The Wildcat players will make their case to the National Labor Relations Board, arguing “they’re not just students who play sports, but employees who work more than 40 hours a week for the university, training, practicing and playing games that bring millions in revenue to the school.”

This is a new twist on the old pay-the-players argument that college sports fans have debated for a few decades. But this time, ESPN reports, the issue arises as “powerful winds of change” are blowing across college sports facilities nationwide.

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Those kids at Northwestern are smart: They’re not only seeking cash, they want better health benefits, worker’s compensation, improved treatment of concussions, and payment for future medical procedures related to their football career.

Given the horrific stories about former National Football League players who were mistreated and now suffer brain damage, greater emphasis on taking concussions seriously is long overdue.

But do we really want our universities to pay for every knee surgery for every 40-year-old who had some form of a knee ailment as a college athlete?

The Northwestern players, led by former Wildcats quarterback Kain Coulter, may win their case at the NLRB. But legal experts say the issue will certainly spark a legal battle and it’s not likely the players will prevail in the courts, based on past precedent.

Let’s hope they go down to an inglorious defeat.

I say that for several reasons, most prominently that college athletics is already spinning out of control.

It’s not that sports are a cash cow for many schools – that’s a myth. But the amount of cash doled out on campus for athletics has created an embarrassing gap when compared to the amount spent on academics. That’s especially true at the NCAA’s “football factories” that serve as a training ground for the lucrative NFL.

The most recent figures show the nation’s 100 largest schools spend an average of $84,446 per athlete. The amount expended for the average classroom student was just $13,349. In the football-crazed Southeastern Conference, the disparity was particularly alarming: $144,592 per athlete, $13,410 per student overall.

The money for sports is spent on everything from travel and equipment to stadium upgrades and multi-million dollar coaches.

Sports fans love statistics, well, here’s an amazing stat: Legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes’ salary peaked in 1977 at $47,000. The current OSU coach, Urban Meyer, was signed by the Buckeyes – before he had coached a single game in Columbus -- for about $4.5 million a year.

Adding a paycheck and benefits into that mix would be a slap in the face to every kid who graduates with student loan debts of $20,000 or $40,000 or $60,000 due to skyrocketing tuition rates.

In terms of fiscal policy, do we want to load another $4.5 billion in costs on our colleges and universities? That’s roughly the overall price tag to pay all student-athletes a basic package of wages and benefits that averages $10,000.

Meanwhile, even before labor unions enter the picture, states have already cut back on academics while schools dramatically increase the taxpayer subsidies for all sports.

And that trend goes far beyond the powerhouse athletic conferences.

In the mild-mannered Mid-American Conference, one category of subsidies rose between 2005-09 from an average of $12 million per school to $16 million, a 33 percent jump in five years.

According to the American Council on Education, the amount Mid American Conference schools tapped their general fund for sports nearly doubled during that period of time, to an average of $7 million. And student fees contributed another $7 million.

In Michigan, we rank among the bottom 10 states in per-resident support for higher education. The state used to pay 75 percent of a college education, it’s now down to less than 25 percent.

Jaded fans who say players should be paid because sports programs generate loads of profit for their schools are wrong.

According to the Knight Commission, which studied the issue extensively, only eight athletics programs at public universities broke even or better from 2005-2009. They were: Georgia, LSU, Penn State, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Every other university loses money on sports. Sure, the big-time college football programs generate tens of millions of dollars in revenues each year, but only the eight listed above have sufficient football funds to cover the cost of sparsely attended Olympic-style sporting events such as field hockey, gymnastics, and swimming, the Council on Education has found.

Not even men’s basketball at iconic places like Duke University or the University of Kansas can generate enough revenue to make their hoops programs profitable.

The Knight Commission in 2010 put it bluntly: We are witnessing a breaking point in which an unhealthy emphasis on sports is damaging academic programs and preventing students from attending school due to unreachable tuition levels.

The commission, led by legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight, concluded that the current path will lead to the “financial destabilization” of U.S. higher education.

That should be the nation’s focus, not treating players like employees in order to fix an illusory problem.

The sorry state of college sports derives almost entirely from an approach that says “win at all costs.” But, given the condition of our academic system, we’re all losing.